Superb dancing eclipsed by jumbled choreography

Allan Ulrich, EXAMINER DANCE CRITIC

Published 4:00 am, Friday, April 12, 1996

SOMETIMES, no matter how hard you try, you just can't top yourself.

Consider Robert Moses, whose company, Robert Moses' Kin, launched a four-night run Thursday evening at Theater Artaud. At the start of the performance, the dancer-choreographer bounds into view in something titled "Never Solo," and to a tape of an attitudinizing old rock song by a group called the Last Poets he brings unambiguous joy to the eye, while the ear is assaulted by the sonic detritus of an earlier (and I refuse to believe, better) era.

Moses, who has danced here with ODC / San Francisco and back East with Twyla Tharp and American Ballet Theatre, is a gorgeous mover, blessed with great speed, articulation and a classical poise that you can read in his wonderfully aligned shoulders, no matter where his feet are headed.

"Never Solo" (1994) regales you with suave jumps, springy leaps across the performing space, terse shimmies, compact pivots and windmilling arms that never threaten to disturb the performers' balance. The voice on the tape screams, "Mercy," but that's the last thing this dancer needs.

To be honest, Moses doesn't display much awareness of choreographic form. He lays out his maneuvers for your delectation, ties them up in an affable manner and doesn't make much of imagery or drama. He has exhibited his gifts in anthology concerts over the past several years, and they seem to have matured.

But when Moses goes to work on other bodies, serious doubts intrude. He follows the solo with a trio, "Wedge" (1995), also set to an impossible dance score, an electronic melange of LaMonte Young and Praxis. The music provides no emotional nuances at all and what we get is not so much a trio as simultaneous solos for Moses, Heather Waldon and Kristin McDonald.

The women stretch, bend into plies, slink and ripple their torsos. Near the end, there's a unison passage of slicing arms for the three performers. Yet, Moses seems completely oblivious here to the implications of group dynamics. The lack of interaction in this barefoot trio is a bit frightening. Nothing wrong with Waldon's and McDonald's compact techniques, but surely the situation should have evoked some kind of emotional response.

That quality is there in the evening's premiere, "Any Space Between Shadows," an hourlong opus that involves all 13 members of the troupe, plus guests from the Bayview Opera House. But Moses' ambitiousness - a survey of injustices committed against African Americans over the years - is not reflected in the choreographer's ability to invest a group with much individuality.

For one who is interested in dance, rather than spoken theater or sociology, watching "Any Space Between Shadows" can be a genuine trial. Just as the piece is drawing to a close, Moses brings on six adolescent women who recount their personal narratives, which have nothing to do with dance.

There's more eclecticism here than Moses can integrate into a theatrical unity. The work begins with a rapper whose soliloquy is incomprehensible as it competes with the overamplified recorded music. Then, Moses throws in a cute group foray, the company arrayed like dominoes far upstage, and ends the sequence with a knifing, all this to an old Nina Simone record.

Meanwhile, the voice on the tape reads parts of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the words modified by synthesizer. The ironies are rather juvenile. Surely, Moses can do better than Richard Nixon and a recording of

"When Johnny Comes Marching Home."

The dance includes episodes of official brutality, sexual assaults and plenty of group endeavors. But Moses can't yet focus the vision. He lines up his dancers this way and that but they never emerge with an independent personality.

And he fails to invest the duets with much potency. He can't yet develop them into complete vignettes; too many encounters simply break off just as they get interesting. And all the talk reminds one that the energy should go into the steps. "Any Space Between Shadows" is simply not ready for viewing by a general public. Moses has not yet reached the promised land.

The remaining performances are Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 7 p.m. For tickets, call (415) 621-7797.

There are other dance events competing for attention this weekend. Urban Bush Women are at Center for the Arts through Saturday with the premiere of "Bones and Ash." And the San Francisco Ballet completes its run of "Swan Lake" at UC-Zellerbach Hall. The casts include Evelyn Cisneros and Anthony Randazzo (Friday, 8 p.m.), Katita Waldo and Benjamin Pierce (Saturday, 2 p.m.) and Elizabeth Loscavio and Yuri Possokhov (Saturday, 8 p.m.).&lt;